Legen…Wait for it…Dary
It’s interesting to work for a company experiencing a lot of fast growth. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but it can be quite exciting. It means a whole lot of change and opportunity. And a lot of new faces too.
Recruitment for a growing company has different challenges. You need a good combination of experienced professionals and ambitious beginners eager to learn and move ahead quickly. Consequently, that means hiring a lot of recent college graduates. There is a special thrill that comes from seeing someone come in fresh from school and impress everyone with their drive, dedication, and hard work. Those are the employees who create legends like, “Did you hear that John was promoted again? That’s 3 promotions in less than 2 years!” Recruiters like me love legends because we can turn around and use them to help recruit more like-minded and awesome candidates.
But those legends always have a downside too. It’s easy to focus on the rapid advancement part and forget about the hard work and dedication that it took to get there. It’s like listening to one of Aesop’s fables for the enjoyment of the story but not bothering to understand the moral.
Ambition and drive are important to have if you want to advance in any company, but more than that, you need to be awesome in your current role. That means working hard, learning all you can, getting to know people in and out of your department, and going above and beyond your minimum job duties. You know, not being ordinary.
If you come into a company and are only focused on where you can go next, you won’t get there. If you don’t care about your attendance, ignore a mundane task you’ve been assigned because you don’t like it, feel you don’t need training because you know it all already, or don’t care about getting to know your teammates because you don’t feel you’ll be around them for long, then the only place you might find yourself moving is out of the company.
If you can’t be amazing in your current role, why would anyone trust you to be amazing in the next? Over the years I’ve seen a lot of potential destroyed by a person’s own hubris. Don’t let that happen to you. Only then will you become legen… wait for it… dary.
